Where Should Valve Draw the Line on Hosting and Selling Software?

In the past Valve has had a policy of not allowing software onto Steam for violating some unwritten policy about nudity. The only examples I know of are for games containing drawn nudity. Developers who want to work around this policy offer a different version of the game on Steam and a patch on the side to re-enable the content. It’s a bad solution because it means that Steam users could be missing out on the full experience. One recently released game seems to have changed this policy for Valve, or at least they didn’t apply it to that game.

Two days ago another product was released on Steam, for VR headsets, called Dating Lessons.

Let’s break down the description from the developer:

!Dating Lessons developed by Cerevrum Inc. is the very first VR course on dating which will give a man the skillset to build a dating life he wishes for.

Not sure why they put that exclamation mark in there. Everyone could use some help feeling confident and understanding relationships. That isn’t terrible.

Men are expected to be always strong, confident and charming. But it is not easy at all!

Ok, they have defined a huge problem with being a man in our culture and finding confidence in oneself. Maybe this software could help people better themselves. Let’s keep reading!

How to approach a woman? What to say to be interesting and charming? With the help of Magic Leone, a professional coach with 10+ years of experience teaching dating skills, every man will overcome his low-esteem and shyness.

11 lectures and 7 practical interactive sessions will give men tools to enhance their power of attraction and develop behavior patterns to handle stress and excessive worrying.

Don’t miss a chance to have an unforgettable VR experience. Following these simple hacks and cheat codes can change your dating life forever.your dating life forever.

Uh. What?
Magic Leone?

Hacks and cheat codes?

The typo at the end of repeating themselves I can forgive, but relationships aren’t a game and there aren’t “hacks” and “cheat codes” for life.

Maybe English isn’t the first language of the developer, let’s look at the screenshots.

What the fuck? Are you supposed to be some kind of dating T-1000?

Now you’re in a photography studio? That is a strange place for a date.Now we have battery Meters and Magic Leone is imploring us to do something.Back to the Terminator vision.

Well, the screenshots didn’t help things. Let’s look at one of Magic Leone’s websites:

Well, I think we know what kind of guy Magic Leone is now. We also find out on this page that he can teach men to become a “SEX GOD.” That was his emphasis that made it uppercase. Lets check out one of his testimonial videos:

I only made it 25 seconds in, when the blurred gentlemen – most of the testimonial videos feature men who are blurred out, presumably because they refused to be depicted – told us he won’t accept “no” for an answer from women. Here’s a cheat code, that makes him a rapist and a terrible person.

Other stores, like Walmart, have a long history of only stocking their shelves with music that is edited to remove language that Walmart doesn’t like. Apple rejected The Binding of Isaac from their iOS App Store only to let it through about a year later without any alteration. There’s a whole page up on Wikipedia about other media that Apple has rejected, and in some cases later allowed through. It’s up to each business to decide what they want to sell, set their policies appropriately, and hopefully enforce those policies fairly.

I hope a wide range of software and games are available on Steam in the future from many different kinds of people and with different viewpoints. As far as I know, this software does not contain nudity, which is something I believe Valve should handle on a case-by-case basis along with explicit polices and filtering for parents and guardians.

Dating Lessons exploits a user’s lack of confidence in relationships and teaches them how to be terrible people and rapists.

This is not what Valve should host and sell, this is where Valve should draw the line.